The New India Foundation announces longlist for Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize 2025
These works, published in the last year, explore a wide range of themes like biographies of pioneering leaders, cultural icons, political movements, social change, and communities that have shaped India's trajectory.
The books that have made it to the longlist include Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva by Janaki Bakhle, India's Forgotten Country: A View from the Margins by Bela Bhatia, Iru: The Remarkable Life of Irawati Karve by Urmilla Deshpande and Thiago Pinto Barbosa, India's Near East: A New History by Avinash Paliwal, Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity by Manu Pillai, Engineering a Nation: The Life and Career of M. Visvesvaraya by Aparajith Ramnath, The Backstage of Democracy: India's Election Campaigns and the People Who Manage Them by Amogh Dhar Sharma, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: The Art of Freedom by Nico Slate, Iconoclast: A Reflective Biographyof Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar by Anand Teltumbde, and The Gujaratis: A Portrait of a Community by Salil Tripathi.
The jury which selected the longlist included chairman of Tata Sons and Tata Group N. Chandrasekaran, entrepreneur Manish Sabharwal, political scientist Niraja Gopal Jayal, historian Srinath Raghavan, partner trilegal Rahul Matthan, Ambassador Jawed Ashraf and Yamini Aiyar. The winning author will be awarded a cash prize of ₹15 lakh.
The shortlist will be announced in October 2025 and the winner will be announced on December 6, during Bangalore Literature Festival.
Instituted in 2018, the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Book Prize is India's largest Book Prize for non-fiction, open to writers of all nationalities who have worked on any aspect of Indian history after Independence. The work can be originally written in English or translated into English, and welcomes a wide range of non-fiction genres.
Ashok Gopal won last year's Book Prize for A Part Apart: The Life and Thought of B.R. Ambedkar (Navayana). Previous winners include Akshaya Mukul for Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya and Shekhar Pathak for The Chipko Movement: A People's History, translated by Manisha Chaudhry.
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